Green Day Discuss Lost Album ‘Cigarettes and Valentines’

When asked recently about their lost, then recovered album Cigarettes and Valentines, Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong and bassist Mike Dirnt revealed that they prefer to keep their sights on the future rather than focus on the past.

“It’s pretty much in the vault right now,” Armstrong told NME. “There was the one song, ‘Cigarettes and Valentine’ that we brought out live. I don’t know, we’ll see if any of that stuff ends up seeing the light of day.”

The album Cigarettes and Valentines was written and recorded in 2003 and was supposed to be the follow-up to 2000’s Warning. However, the recordings were stolen from the studio prompting the band to start anew and eventually record what would become American Idiot. After Green Day eventually got the tracks back they wound up in the Green Day vault, which the band occasionally mines for new material.

“There’s one song that was written a long time ago that’s on the new record [Revolution Radio] called ‘Young Blood’, and that got a facelift and new lyrics and stuff like that,” Armstrong added.

“There’s always a lot in the vault, but we tend to look forward rather than reaching back,” bassist Mike Dirnt added.